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During 2007-2008 I was on research leave, supported by an NSF grant (NSF SES-0724383 Brading 201201), working on a project entitled 'Structuralist Approaches to Physics' (view project details, including drafts and bibliographies). This project is ongoing. Work-in-progress includes 'Underdetermination as a path to ontic structural realism', with Alex Skiles (view draft). Bibliographies for structuralism in contemporary philosophy of science can be found by following the appropriate links here.

I advocate a law-constitutive approach to the entities that are the subject matter of science, and this theme runs through much of my work, including my interests in structuralism (see the above draft paper with Skiles) and in early modern philosophy (here is a recent draft paper, 'Newton's law-constitutive approach to bodies: a response to Descartes').

I am particularly interested in the significance and interpretation of symmetries in physics. Below you will find links to various papers on this theme, and also to my DPhil thesis. I have also co-edited a book on this topic, Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections. For a full list of publications, please see my CV.

DPhil thesis: Symmetries, Conservation Laws, and Noether's Variational Problem

‘Which Symmetry? Noether, Weyl and Conservation of Electric Charge’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33, 3-22, 2002. (view paper)

‘General Covariance from the Perspective of Noether’s Theorems’, with Dr. H. R. Brown, Diálogos 79, 59-86, 2002. (view paper)

‘Symmetry and Symmetry-Breaking’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, with Dr. Elena Castellani, 2003.

‘Are gauge symmetry transformations observable?’, with Dr. H. R. Brown, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55, 645-665, 2004. (view paper)

'A note on general relativity, energy conservation, and Noether's theorems', in Einstein Studies vol 11, ed. A. J. Kox and J. Eisenstaedt, 125-135, 2005.

'Hilbert's "Foundations of Physics": Gravitation and Electromagnetism Within the Axiomatic Method', Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39, 2008, pp. 102-153. (view paper)

Book review of L. Corry, David Hilbert and the Axiomatization of Physics (1898-1918), in Philosophia Mathematica (III) 15, 2007, 1-16.